too much

We had an appointment with the post office to sign papers for life insurance

In Japan, the post office does banking as well as sell insurance.

Since a lot of Japanese businesses are still "old skool", they gave us “gifts” for signing up with their insurance plan.

In the past, the insurance guy gave us a handkerchief and small towels

This time I think he went overboard

Any ideas how I can cut the roll of saran wrap in half?! it’s too long, I usually by the smaller size

Thankful but way too much stuff

foodie stamps

It's that time of year already...holiday cards and foodie stamps.

This year's stamps are cute...dango and taiyaki.

Gotta get working on our cards soon...

foodie stamps

The foodie stamps for overseas holiday cards went on sale today.

A couple of weeks ago, I put in an order for some, but, the post office didn't seem to confident that they could fill my order...WT?

In fact, they want me to come next week to pick the order up....

Dunno why they can't have these stamps year round.

Anyway, since I don't trust the post office, I went to pick some up anyway.

UPDATE: Post office put my order in and I picked them up today...whoo!

so...

So, I went to the post office yesterday to pick up those new foodie stamps that I had ordered...

Well, the lady at the post office misunderstood me and only reserved 1 sheet of 10 stamps!

I wanted 10 sheets totalling 100 stamps...

The problem lies with the counting system in Japanese...

When I said, 10 "mai" (flat pieces of something) the lady took it to mean 10 stamps...

I needed to say I wanted 10 "sheets".

No problem though, I bought more from another post office down the street.

Lesson learned and I realize that counting in Japanese is still confusing.

On the up side, how cute are these stamps! Can't wait to use them for our overseas nengajo (New Years cards).

Have a nice weekend.

daily stuff

　The daytimes have been warm (hot!) while the early mornings and evenings have been quite cool.

Last night we had quite a rainstorm. No thunder but it was coming down quite hard.

Today, I went to the post office to get their Star Wars masking tapes. They are really cute!

Also in preparation for the end of the year, the post office is bringing back the foodie stamps. This year's version is of ramen & sukiyaki.

Last year I was late to the game and wasn't able to get enough stamps for the cards I send overseas.

Since the stamps go on sale tomorrow, I put in an order so that they could keep some aside for me.

How is your week going?

foodie stamps

Yesterday, I wrote about getting our holiday cards done...well, between Picmonkey and Fudeoh, I got the design done.

I worked on the ones I will send overseas, but I still need to work on the ones for Japan.

I wanted to show you these stamps that they came out with for the holidays...sushi & tempura...so cute!

My only peeve is that they didn't make a whole lot and ran out, so we had to buy some of their other (ugly) stamps to add to our postcards.

Because I'm a foodie, I am biased and feel they should make these regulars instead of just for the holidays, don't you think?!

Have a nice weekend!

post office

Not sure about what services your post office has to offer where you live, but in Japan, post offices also provide forms of banking and insurances. Anyway, I recently had to go to the post office to send my passport in for re-newal.

What an expensive thing to do overseas!

700 yen (about US$7)...passport photo
500 yen (about US$5)...special self-addressed envelope
8062 yen (US $75 @ 107.50 yen exchange rate)...international money order (to pay for passport)
2000 yen (about US$20)...handling fee to create the money order
620 yen (about US$6.20)...registered mailing fee (just in case something happens when sending it in...)
Total: 11882 yen (about $118)

passport good for 10 years....priceless!

There is one guy at our post office who is always so nice and patient with me...thank you!

Anyway, while I was waiting for the money order to be made, I noticed that they had these for sale....Hello Kitty stamps.

As some of you know, I am a member of Postcrossing. So, I'm always looking out for Japanese-y postcards and stamps. If you like to send and receive postcards, this is a great way to do it. Most people in Postcrossing have nice profiles and they are easy going, but sometimes you run into a few that are quite demanding, they write things like this in their profiles..."no handmade cards", "please put pretty stamps on the cards you send to me", "no Mt. Fuji cards I'm sick of these"...blah, blah, blah. I think these people should just be happy that someone is sending them a card.

Anyway, these Kitty-chan stamps will soon be making their way around the world. Oh and hopefully my passport will go through smoothly and be back in a couple of weeks.